Knew an FDA inspector back during the last years of Clinton and the first year's of Bush. The horror stories I heard from her about cutbacks, and actually getting in trouble for reporting problems. She did inspections at Chicken factories.

Knew an FDA inspector back during the last years of Clinton and the first year's of Bush. The horror stories I heard from her about cutbacks, and actually getting in trouble for reporting problems. She did inspections at Chicken factories.

Just to correct myself, it was probably the USDA she worked for, not the FDA.

Level at which mercury becomes "unsafe" according to the Federal government: 5 parts per million, set as 1/3 of what they knew from some very large studies to be a safe level (about 15 ppm before any effects are even detected).

Level of mercury found in the fish in the study: between about 0.4 and 1.4 parts per million - from about 1/12 to about 1/3 of actual recommended maximum levels.

Level at which the study arbitrarily sets "unsafe": 0.22 parts per million.

How to get "unsafe" mercury levels in fish: redefine the actual unsafe levels as about 1/20 of what they actually are. From their charts, it looks like they took the lowest level they could detect in any actual fish and divided it by 2.

Reducing mercury pollution is on the agenda of the United Nations conference this week in Geneva

That's all you needed to know to be very suspicious of the whole thing.

Wait wait, let me guess... We'll do the usual thing where the United States spends a ton of money to abide by the treaty, some countries in Europe and Asia spend a ton of money to abide by the treaty, everyone else makes no effort what so ever and simply profits.

cirby:Level at which mercury becomes "unsafe" according to the Federal government: 5 parts per million, set as 1/3 of what they knew from some very large studies to be a safe level (about 15 ppm before any effects are even detected).

This PDF describes the EPA's calculations of how often it's safe to eat fish based on its mercury level. At 0.22 ppm it's considered safe to have 4 meals per month of that fish. Unrestricted consumption (more than 16 meals per month) requires less than 0.029 ppm.

Maybe your "5 ppm" is referring to accumulated levels in the human body, rather than to safe levels in food?

cirby:Level at which mercury becomes "unsafe" according to the Federal government: 5 parts per million, set as 1/3 of what they knew from some very large studies to be a safe level (about 15 ppm before any effects are even detected).

1/3? That's kind of a high bar to set from the NOAEL. They must have had a lot of good, solid research. Usually it's set between 10 - 3000 times below the NOAEL.

Well, technically it's a problem of any culture that relies heavily on a fish diet. Not just first world people.

Um, technically it's a problem that we made ourselves, recently, and we could have avoided it entirely. Decades ago.

/Want to see what mercury does? Read up on the Minamata disaster.//Did a report on that back in college for a Toxic Tragedies course

Yeah, it's bad stuff. Even in the smallest of amounts.

I'd say that between mercury and plastic, we have some good odds that we could be f*cked as a species.

What's worse is that levels that are normally perfectly fine for an adult (or even a child) can be damaging to a fetus. I'm very happy that my pregnant wife has developed a food aversion to seafood right now.

I actually haven't heard that song before. Just looked it up. They talk a lot about kepone and Minamata, but I'm not sure what the connection is. The only kepone disaster that I'm aware of happened in Virginia. And Minamata is in Japan.

Ivo Shandor:This PDF describes the EPA's calculations of how often it's safe to eat fish based on its mercury level. At 0.22 ppm it's considered safe to have 4 meals per month of that fish. Unrestricted consumption (more than 16 meals per month) requires less than 0.029 ppm.

Not mercury - methylmercury.

"US EPA, 2000, Table 4-3 (see attachment) presents risk-based fish consumption limits which relate the number offish meals that can be eaten per month to fish tissue concentrations of methylmercury."

They confuse things a bit by mixing mercury and methylmercury concentrations - but methylmercury is a much, much more toxic substance (and found in much lower concentrations in fish).

Someone needs to make a fish calculator that will tell you how many of which type of fish you can have per month based on current mercury levels. fishcalculator.com is where something like that could be found..